Friday, January 15, 2010

It's Friday! Friiiidaaaaaaay! Here at Mac and Fingers it has been a long week. Along with redesigning our website and trying to blog, and Karen trying to pay bills on time, I started a new teaching term where I am teaching every single day. I love my teaching job (well, this particular job, anyway) but I have to tell you, I'm dealing with a situation that I'm not quite certain how to handle.

I am teaching a group of about 9 boys, ages 18-22. That in and of itself is not a big deal. They have pretty good manners. They are respectful. They sing when I tell them to sing and the atmosphere is relaxed and it is generally a pleasant 50 minutes. The problem is this:

They stink.

And I don't mean their singing, either

Not all of them, I'm sure. I'm not getting close enough to find out who does and who doesn't. No thank you. It's a small room with poor ventilation and some of these boys need to bathe! My 8 yr. old smells better than some of these guys!

So yesterday I am in class and after about ten minutes I say," Hey student P, could you open the window a bit?" Student P looks at the window and says,"Uhm, it's covered with plastic." (The building is an old, Tudor style, estate home and they STILL cover the windows with plastic every winter.

I do believe, in that very moment, the room got that. much. smaller. I seriously have considered just taking a knife and cutting the plastic off. I can see the headline now: Professor Crashes the Window in Desperate Attempt to Breathe.

I have 15 more weeks with these young ones. Any suggestions on how to handle it?

4 comments:

Melissa, I truly feel for you. I experienced a similar situation in my prior job. Except these were grown me who felt it completely acceptable to pass gas in the office. And one routinely forgot to shower or wear clean clothes.